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Penelope could no longer refrain. She glanced at his broad chest, then lower still, down his flat, muscle-corded belly to the thin line of dark hair that trailed to the top of his breeches. Her breath caught, her stomach tightened involuntarily and a warm, sweet ache spread like heated honey through her limbs. To her shame, she yearned to touch him, yearned for him to touch her in all the places no man ever had, or should.
“Dear Lady,” he said, his voice a deep, arousing caress, “you won’t refuse me.”
“Well, hell,” I mutter, closing the book. Penelope isn’t the only one with a warm, sweet ache.
First Bert, then Mother, now Erin.
Maybe the person who came up with the old saying, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” knew what he or she was talking about.
Tucking Penelope’s Passion beneath my arm, I leave Erin’s room. At the end of the hallway, I poke my head around the corner into the den where Mother sits knitting and watching TV, with Maxwell snoring on the rug at her feet. The knitting needles click out a rhythmic beat.
“I think I’ll turn in early and catch up on some reading.” Mother’s needles pause. The clicking stops. She looks up at me. “I hope for once you’re reading for pleasure instead of for work.”
The corner of my mouth spasms as I think of Penelope’s captain. “Purely for pleasure tonight, Mother. You have my word.”
CHAPTER 2
To: Erin@friendmail.com
From: Suz@friendmail.com
Date: 11/1 Saturday
Subject: Tonight
Hey. Meet me at the mall at 11:30. We’ll eat, then shop for something to wear out tonight to The Beat. You’re going. No excuses.
I look at the outfit spread across Suzanna’s bed and wish I’d never checked my e-mail this morning. The skintight, one-sleeved red-and-black striped top will leave one shoulder completely bare, while the pleated black pinstriped miniskirt is barely long enough to cover my scrawny butt. But the worst of it all sits in an open box; a pair of ankle-high, pointy-toed red boots with buckles on the sides and short spiked heels.
This afternoon at the mall, I gave into Suzanna’s arm-twisting and bought it all. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The outfit was great for laughs in the dressing room. But the thought of actually wearing it in public makes me want to puke up Nana’s fried chicken.
My stuff has been in the trunk of my car since I left the mall. It’s bad enough having Mom to deal with, but now I have Nana, too. It’s not like I don’t want her to live with us; I do. But I’m afraid if the two of them saw these clothes, Mom would go ballistic and Nana might have a heart attack. And two against one makes it that much harder to defend yourself. I’m sure Mom didn’t have this sort of outfit in mind for my concert. Which, now that I think of it, I totally forgot to shop for. The concert, that is.
“This all goes back,” I say, shaking my head and turning to face my friend. “It’s not me at all. It’s more like something you’d wear.”
Suz grabs the top and holds it up in front of me. “Oh, get over it. You’re just nervous. You’re gonna look amazing.”
“I’ll feel like a skank.”
“Are you saying I dress like a skank?”
“No. I’m saying that you can pull off wearing slutty things without looking skanky. I can’t.”
Suzanna tosses the satiny top in my face. “That’s just stupid.”
I catch the shirt and start to refold it. “It doesn’t matter what I wear tonight. If I’m with you no guy’s going to notice me anyway.” Not that they pay me much attention when Suz isn’t around. It’s just worse when she is.
“That’s only because you’re so quiet. They probably think you don’t want to hook up.”
“Okay.” I sit at the edge of her bed, wishing she’d turn off the rap music, which I hate. “Then explain why it is that guys who’ve never met me, guys who don’t know I’m quiet or that you’re outgoing, completely look past me whenever you and I are together? Even before we ever open our mouths?”
Suz rolls her eyes. “As if.”
“It’s true.”
“If it is true, which it isn’t, then maybe it’s because…” She pauses to nibble her lower lip. “Well, I hate to say this, but maybe it’s because you dress like an orchestra member.”
“I am an orchestra member.”
“Exactly.” Suzanna flips back her long blond hair.
“Playing the cello doesn’t have anything to do with the way I dress. Lot’s of girls who aren’t in orchestra dress like me.”
“They probably can’t hook up, either.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” I glance down at my jeans and T-shirt, bought last week, though they aren’t my style. “I’m showing skin.” I point at my belly button. “See?”
Suz eyes my jeans. “At least they aren’t your usual. Baggy, khaki or black.”
“Samantha Carter dresses like a nun and she has boyfriends. My clothes aren’t the problem.”
“Then what?”
I lay the folded skank-top on the bed beside me, cross my arms and stare straight at her chest. “Remember yesterday after school when you ran up to me in the parking lot while I was talking to Todd Blackburn about our science project?”
She nods. “What about it?”
“When he saw you coming, he forgot I existed. At first I thought it was your bouncing ponytail that threw him into a trance. Then I realized your hair wasn’t the only thing bouncing.”
Her eyes widen. “Shut up! I wasn’t bouncing!”
“Yes you were! And Todd wasn’t the only guy in the parking lot who noticed. Instead of ‘follow the bouncing ball,’ it was ‘follow the bouncing boobs.’”
“That’s disgusting.” Suzanna’s face flushes, which is a total surprise since nothing much embarrasses her.
“Well, if that’s the problem,” she says, “I can solve it.”
“If you tell me to stand up straight and stick out my personality, I’m out of here.” Back before Nana quit sewing, she’d say that to me. She’d be fitting a dress or whatever, pinning it at my shoulders or under my pits and getting all bent out of shape because I was slumping.
Suz makes a face and starts for the door. “Wait here.”
While she’s gone I turn off the music and swipe a piece of mint gum from her dresser. I think how weird it is that two people so different wound up friends. I moved to Dallas as a sophomore two years ago when Dad expanded his business. Since then, I’ve been pretty much alone when it comes to a social life. I hate my school with all its little groupies. Until Suz transferred in at the beginning of the year, I didn’t have a best friend. The truth is, I didn’t have any close friends at all. Just kids I hung out with sometimes. Other girls from my orchestra class, usually. Most of them quiet, goody-two-shoes nobodies. Which is probably how people think of me, too. I didn’t share secrets with anyone or talk on the phone ’til late at night. I never laughed so hard I peed my pants. Mainly, I studied a lot, practiced my cello, made the honor roll and spent time with Mom.
Then Suzanna showed up and everything changed. She lives nearby in a Dallas suburb. Suz isn’t exactly honor roll material, but she knows how to have fun. She should’ve graduated last year, but she didn’t pass a couple of classes. Instead of retaking the first semester of her senior year at her old school and being totally humiliated, her parents let her transfer. I still can’t figure out why she chose to hang out with me. At her old school, she was a cheerleader with more friends than she could keep track of. She says they’ve all taken off to different colleges. I’m pretty sure some of them made her feel stupid for not graduating, though she’s never come out and said it.
Some friends.
I think she realized that. Or maybe she’s just had enough of the whole “high school popularity” thing. Whatever the reason, she latched on to me the second she heard me playing cello in an empty classroom one day after school, and she’s never let go. Okay, so sometimes I feel like her ugly stepsister. But at least I have fun now that I’m not hanging with Mom 24/7.
I’m dabbing some of Suz’s spicy perfume on my neck when she walks back into the room and hands me two pale pink oval blobs. “What are these? Dead jellyfish?”
“Silicone inserts,” she says. “They’re Katie’s. She takes after Dad. I take after Mom.”
Katie, Suzanna’s fifteen-year-old sister, is so flat she’s almost concave. “She actually wears these?” I press the blobs against my 32-A’s. The inserts even have nipples. Hard ones.
“Sometimes she does.”
“Well, I can’t,” I say. “I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s false advertising for one thing. For another,” I pinch the nipples, “I’d look like I’m chronically cold.”
Suz snickers.
“Besides, if a guy’s only interested in me because he thinks I have big boobs then maybe he’s not worth knowing.”
She sits beside me. “Let me explain guys to you. They can’t help it. They’re drawn to ta-tas like flies are drawn to picnic tables. It’s the way they’re wired.”
I lay the blobs on the bed beside the red boots. “In that case, I have no hope.”
“Not true. You just have to trick them into noticing you so that they’ll stick around long enough to get to know you better. Once they do, and they realize how funny and smart you are, your booblessness won’t matter so much.”
I stare at her. “Yeah, right.”
Suz sighs. “Okay, maybe not. I’ve never met a guy our age that mature.”
I think of Dad. Mom doesn’t know I figured out about him and the sleazoid who lives next door. But I’m not stupid. I saw how his eyelids got all heavy-looking whenever he saw her out in the driveway wearing only a little bikini top with her short shorts. I heard how his voice changed whenever they spoke, how his deep drawl got deeper and more drawn out, like the words were coated with molasses. “I’m not sure they’re ever that mature,” I say to Suzanna. “Even the old ones.”
Suz sighs. “We’ll have to concentrate on something besides funny and smart then.” She studies me. “You have great eyes. I wish mine were big and brown. And your hair…” She twists it up on top of my head then lets it fall. “I like the color.”
“You have a thing for muddy brown?”
She makes a face. “It’s chestnut.”
“Whatever you say.”
Suz picks up an insert. “Quit being so negative and just have some fun with these, why don’t you?” She tosses it at me. “At least try them on with the clothes.”
Five minutes later, I strut back and forth in front of Suzanna’s full-length mirror laughing like a crazy person. “Hey, dressing like a slut is sort of fun.”
“Ohmigod! You’re so not slutty-looking. I swear! You look like a model. You have to buy some of those thingies to wear all the time. They look real!”
Jumping up and down, I watch them jiggle. I laugh so hard tears run down my cheeks. I admit to Suzanna that I think I might like pretending to be the girl in the mirror for just one night.
“Then let me change clothes and we’ll get out of here,” she says, clapping her hands together.
My stomach twists. I wipe my eyes. “I want to, but I can’t.”
“What now?”
“My mom. She’ll freak if she finds out I went to The Beat.”
“We won’t be drinking. If you’re under twenty-one, they put a band on your wrist so the waiters won’t serve you.”
“I’m not eighteen yet. I can’t get in.”
“My cousin Trevor works there. He’ll be taking cover at the door tonight. He’ll let you through.”
“I don’t know. I could be eighteen and swear not to drink, and Mom still wouldn’t let me go.”
“Come on, Erin. Please? All the college guys go there. When I went with Trevor last weekend on his night off we had a blast.”
“I want to….”
“Then do it! I like your mother, but she’s so strict. You’re not a little girl anymore, and if you don’t stand up to her and make her see that, you’ll never get to have any fun. What does she expect you to do? Sit around with her and your grandmother on weekends? You might as well just skip the next twenty years of your life and go straight to the old folks’ home.”
“I can’t stand up to her. I know my mother. I’ll lose.”
“I think you should try. It’s either that or go behind her back.”
I imagine telling Mom I’m going to The Beat. After she gets over the shock of it she’ll forbid me to leave the house. I imagine saying that she can’t stop me. Then I think of my car, which she bought, the gasoline, which she pays for, the allowance she puts in my pocket. She has plenty of ways to make my life miserable.
“I choose going behind her back.”
Suz raises her brows. “Ooh-kay.”
“It’s my only chance of going.” I glance at my watch. “We’re not going to have much time. I have to be home by eleven on weekends, and it’s nine now. By the time you get ready and we drive out there, we’ll have to leave again.”
“Eleven? Your Mom is strict.” Suzanna frowns. “Things don’t really even get going until after eleven. But don’t worry.” She thinks for a few seconds then smiles. “I have a plan.”
It’s easier than I thought to sneak the sack of new clothes into my bedroom.
“Erin? Is that you, Sugar?” my grandmother calls from the den when the front door slams.
“Hi, Nana. Be right there.” I stuff the sack under my bed.
Even before I get to the den, I hear music playing. The kind with a lot of brass and piano, with some guy’s silky voice weaving through it. I’m sort of weirded out when I find Nana on the floor with Maxwell tucked up beside her. Leaning against the sofa, she scratches his belly, her eyes closed, her glasses on the coffee table beside her. Socks cover her feet, and her toes tap the air to the beat of the song. I don’t know why seeing someone her age sprawled out on the floor with her shoes off seems strange, but it does.
For a minute, I just stand and stare at her, afraid to break the mood. It’s like her mind is someplace besides this room, in a different time, a happy one if the smile on her face is any clue. It may sound stupid, but I almost feel like I’m spying on something private, something I shouldn’t disturb. Deciding I should just tiptoe away, I start to turn.
Nana’s eyes flutter open. She squints. “Oh, Erin.” Lifting her hand from Maxwell’s belly, she places it on the sofa. “Come sit and talk with me.”
Maxwell raises his head and whimpers until she touches him again. I understand. I remember the comfort of being cozied up to her. When I was little, we’d sit together in the rocker and she’d read to me. She smelled soapy clean.
Suzanna waits outside for me, three houses down the block. The excitement she offers tugs me one way at the same time Nana’s warmth pulls me the other. I hesitate then cross the room, settling on the sofa beside where she sits on the floor. “I thought you might be asleep.”
“No, just resting my eyes.” She sits up straight, reaches for her glasses then slides them up the bridge of her nose. “How was your evening? Did you have a nice time with your friend?”
